What makes something special is not just what you have to gain, but what you feel there is to lose. - Andre Agassi

You can't ask my father anything directly. So I file it away with all the other things I don't know about my parents - permanently missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle that is me.

Maybe I don't know yet how to be happy and play well at the same time.

The worse I do in school, the more I rebel. I drink, I smoke pot, I act like an ass. I’m dimly aware of the inverse ratio between my grades and my rebellion, but I don’t dwell on it. I prefer Nick’s theory. He says I don’t do well in school because I have a hard-on for the world. It might be the only thing he’s ever said about me that’s halfway accurate. (He typically describes me as a cocky showboater who seeks the limelight. Even my father knows me better than that.) My general demeanor does feel like a hard-on — violent, involuntary, unstoppable — and so I accept it as I accept the many changes in my body.